Search for N.Y. prison escapees expands to Vermont

Associated Press

Updated 11:01 pm, Wednesday, June 10, 2015

DANNEMORA, N.Y. — The manhunt for two escaped killers expanded to campsites and boat slips in Vermont on Wednesday, and State Police said a female prison staff member being questioned may have had a role in helping the men.

At a news conference outside the maximum-security prison, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said investigators learned that the inmates had talked before last weekend’s breakout about going to neighboring Vermont.

“New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement,” Shumlin said on Day 5 of the search. He and other officials would not say how authorities obtained that information.

Elementary school in Oakland opens time capsule from 1927San Francisco Chronicle

Brides of March walk through San FranciscoSan Francisco Chronicle

WildCare rescues Western scrub jay from rodent glue trapWildCare

The Regulars: The CarpenterJessica Christian

New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico also said a prison employee — identified in news reports as Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison tailor shop — had befriended the killers and “may have had some role in assisting them.”

He would not elaborate.

Mitchell’s son, Tobey Mitchell, 21, told NBC that his mother checked herself into a hospital with chest pains Saturday. He said she wouldn’t have helped the inmates escape.

Using power tools, David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, cut through a steel wall, broke through bricks and crawled through a steam pipe before emerging through a manhole in the street outside the 3,000-inmate prison in a breakout discovered early Saturday.

Authorities suspect they had help from the inside in obtaining the power tools.

Unions representing guards and civilian staff at the prison said many have been questioned by investigators, but no one has been suspended, disciplined or charged.

Vermont authorities are patrolling Lake Champlain and areas alongside, Shumlin said. Cuomo urged the people of Vermont to be on the alert and report anything suspicious, warning: “Trust me, these men are nothing to be trifled with.”

State troopers and corrections officers in helmets and body armor also retraced their steps around the Clinton Correctional Facility, checking garage doors, sheds, windows and other structures in a house-to-house search for signs of a break-in or other clues to where the men might be hiding.